


Crime Pays

by shihadchick



Category: due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-30
Updated: 2006-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-22 08:04:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shihadchick/pseuds/shihadchick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>About 2500 words of Ray, with, as Frog so eloquently put it months ago "visits to the department of backstory" among other things.  F/K eventually (because, well, this is <em>me</em>).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crime Pays

**Author's Note:**

> Respectfully dedicated to [Chris](http://the-antichris.livejournal.com/), for hosting this as commentfic in her journal last night and then encouraging me, and to [Kat](http://katrin.livejournal.com/), who prompted me with 'wrists' (although this is totally not actually that story) and then beta'd for me in record time before - get this - encouraging me to add _more_ run-on sentences and saying "BUNK!" in all the right places.  I am blessed in my friends. ;)

When Stanley Raymond Kowalski is six, Cops and Robbers is the most important game on the block. Hide and Seek is greatness, and all, sneaky and messy with all the best hiding spots doled out over the years by tradition - you gotta earn your way into the creephole under the Jackson's porch - but for good old fashioned, rip the knee out of your jeans until your ma yells at you for wrecking 'perfectly good clothes', roll around in the mud and play-fight for hours fun? It's cops and robbers all the way. Being Ray's neighborhood, and all, and considering there's usually a pack of anywhere between four and ten kids milling around, of different ages and sizes and tempers, there's actually a lot more competition over who gets to be the bad guy than you might think.  Some of these kids have got, you know, family traditions and all.

Usually the bad guys outnumber the 'goodies', if only because it's more exciting that way, and Ray's usually one of the cops, because even at six, he likes a challenge. And 'catching' Nick Voleur (who grew up to be an accountant, and Ray (aged twenty-something) thinks that's just about the fucking funniest thing he's heard in weeks, when his mom tells him) is always good fun, especially when the cops get called home for dinner and can "forget" that they've cuffed the criminals to the bike rack down by the bus stop. Understandably, with the greater dignity of an eight year old Nick never really appreciates it, though Ray doesn't mind so much when it's him. Easy enough to wriggle out of the cheap plastic cuffs that you could get with your allowance at Sears anyway, just takes a little bit of time is all.

Though the game is a bit harder when it's Nick's sister Janey robbing the 'safe', because _you don't hit girls, Stanley_ , and his ma would've _killed_ him if he'd ever roughed her up any. Which is how Stanley Ray Kowalski comes home with cheerfully bruised grins and split lips at the ages of six, seven, nine and twelve. Course, the one at age twelve was from Nick and not Janey, but usually it's best not to explain that one too much anyway.

When Ray is eleven, he spends most of his time playing on the beat-up arcade games in the corner of the burger place. His hands flash from controller to button, quick and steady, eyes on the prize.  He doesn't bother with those claw games, because any idiot can see they're rigged better than the numbers down the Social Club, but the classic quarter games? Yeah, he's all over those.  Got good hand-eye coordination already, no awkward gangles to him at all yet.

When Ray is twelve, he still looks a lot younger, and the police who turn up at the bank After apparently feel kinda sorry for him, because no one laughs, and Stella's busy saying how he saved her, and he can't really argue with that (doesn't want to) and so he sits quietly in the station house and waits for his mother to come get him. Police officers move around and past him for nearly an hour, all busy, all off in their own world, except for one guy who keeps checking that he's OK and does he want another can of pop or anything and calls him "Kowalski" like he is a grown up really, like he's just as good as one of the guys in blue, whistling as they stomp around and curse at each other and the criminals in sort of equal measure, wallet in one pocket and cuffs hanging from the belt loop of the other. Ray scrunches up in the waiting room chair and wonders when exactly the growth spurt he's been promised is actually gonna show. Life would be a lot easier, he thinks, if he was _taller_.

When Ray is fourteen, and 'Ray' now to everyone but his mother, he spends most of his time trying to make time with Stella. Maybe he's a little ahead of the rest of his friends, maybe he's the geek with four-eyes and an unfortunate incident in a bank, but he's finding more and more he can get away with leaving the glasses at home. With squinting at the boards in school (who needs 'em anyway, really? Steve McQueen never spent hours doing math problems) and scraping through his homework because it's a way better use of his time to hang out at Stella's, when he's allowed in, and to just ride around on the buses and el when he's not. He likes to sit at the table, practicing his sprawl, (the leather jacket that will complete the look is still about six months of savings in his future) and watch her do her homework, pen in mouth (dangerous, that, he'd never been able to sit still watching the Stella with anything in her mouth, even before he really knew exactly why), all delicate limbs and clever smiles and a warm look that he is not kidding himself is just for him.

When Ray is fifteen, he alternates between playing with, well, let's be honest, _himself_ and playing with Stella. Much more mature games, now, but she's always hesitant and uncomfortable and her parents are always home and his never go out, so obviously a car would, you know, _help_. Plus, Ray's getting a little sick of riding the bus everywhere. He's fifteen now, he's _grown up_.

When Ray is sixteen, or close enough as to make no difference, he lasts a whole week ("never. again.") working in the grocery store down the street. He's saving up for the car, and his dad's going to match him dollar for dollar, which is fantastic, it's great, it's more than he expected (though he suspects there's a large degree of Damien simply wanting to get him out from under his feet in it, too) but the point at which he realises this is just not for him is when he catches himself - for the second time - drifting off in the quiet parts of the afternoons (when the kids are all home eating their PB&Js and before the dinner rush on olive loaf), just playing with the elastic bands they use to hold the paper bags down on their hooks. The point that worries him isn't so much that he kinda likes the way they look, fitting close over the narrow bones of his wrist, or even the way they cut in a little, sometimes, if they're too tight - it's the way that without even thinking he's pulled them out into a figure eight and looped his wrists together. Bound. It's kinda kinky, kinda, well, _cool_ and there's something weirdly normal about it. He wonders if maybe Stella wouldn't mind stopping off at Sears before they head out that Friday night. He might not be able to get that car yet, but even after he tosses in this job - which is _dumb_ , and _boring_ \- in favour of something a bit more him, he can sure afford the $3.47 for a kid's cop kit.

When Ray is sixteen for real, Stella takes him out on her allowance (normally that would not be cool, that would be totally breaking the guy code and the date code, and the way that Ray desperately wants - needs - to spoil her and show her how good he can be to her, but this is _his birthday_ and he's _sixteen_ and it's _special_ ) and after they're done with their burgers she drags him into a ugly little shop tucked into an alley off Monroe, one of those old fashioned jewelry shops run by a guy who's more Polish than all of Ray's grandparents put together, and she buys him a silver chain, big thick links, and it loops twice around his wrist (because necklaces are for _sissies_ ) and he knows it's just as good as a big stamp on his forehead saying "Stella's" and he's fine with that. All she says is "I thought you'd like that, Ray," and they share a smile and a kiss and the shop guy mutters at them about "in his day" and they clear out, giggling together and Ray doesn't stop playing with the bracelet for weeks. Doesn't stop playing with it even after it finally gives up the ghost, snagged on a hedge two months after he finished at the academy (when Ray is twenty) and ten minutes after the foot chase that got him his first bawling out by his Lieutenant and his first apprehension without backup. Stella doesn't mind, then, and because she doesn't, he doesn't either, and after a while it becomes a habit. He loses a chain, breaks a chain, on one notable occasion (when Ray is twenty-six) has it just plain slip off and down-- well, that doesn't really matter, either way, he just rolls on up wherever and gets a new one. It's the look that counts. The symbol-whatsit of it. It's still Stella's, even if she only lays eyes on it every other night (tired, dark circles under her eyes weeks before important cases) and only lays hands on it (when Ray is thirty) even less often, only holds his hands above his head while she lies on him, kisses him, loves to see how long he can last without touching her in return. It's not usually very long, but she can always hold both his hands in her one, because he might be taller (finally) and stronger (well, mostly), but she's got a hold on him that he can't even express any more.

When Ray is thirty-three, Stella's still got a hold on him, but she's also got her own apartment, his name, and probably if he listens to his friends - the few who're still talking to him - she's got about ten more minutes of patience before _he's_ got a restraining order. Ray rips off the last bracelet (the one she only touched once, soothing him while he pleaded for her to come home and she just shook her head 'no' while tears glittered and held in her eyes) and he throws it out the window. Then inside of a week he can't take it anymore, looks (feels) too strange to have nothing there and so he quietly goes out and finds a new one. Not a real chain this time, not any more, just a basic loop that looks like something you'd hang keys off, ball and spoke joints that he can run between thumb and restless forefinger, but it doesn't bend like normal links, won't make more than little circles, can't bend back on itself. If he had time in between the working and the paperwork and, okay, the scotch, he'd probably figure there was something deep and meaningful there. As it was, he just thinks "different" and tries to get the fuck on with his life.

When Ray is thirty-four he's not Stanley Raymond Kowalski. He's someone else, he's undercover, he's avoiding all that shit. He's still a cop and he still gets to run down the bad guys and that's just as satisfying as it was when he was six. And when he's thinking, his thumb hooks easily under the new chain that dangles from his wrist, habit well-formed even in only a few short months, and part of him just enjoys the second looks that gets him sometimes. Hey, if he wasn't gonna wear the awful 'designer' (and Ray, who knows designer, because hello, married to Stella there, thinks that there's no way he's ever taking that description out of quote marks) shirts, he had to have something. So, the bracelet. The handcuffs - the lined ones, not the ones he uses in his actual  _job_ as an actual cop - are buried somewhere in the back of his closet and in the back of his mind and even when the Canadian freak he has to (and in less than a day's acquaintance, _wants to_ , because Ray might not be the poster boy for Mensa or nothing, but he always knows what he likes) work with gets more and more interesting, Ray doesn't let himself think about it too much. No sense in getting into something again that he can't wriggle out of.

When Ray is thirty-five he goes to Canada. Not via the usual method, of plane-train-or-automobile, not over the border into Ontario or the Northwest Areas or whatever, no, Ray skids into Canada on his hands and knees, on the run, headstrong and sore. Twenty minutes after that Fraser is rubbing ointment on his head and five minutes after that Fraser is cuffing him and Ray didn't even know Fraser  _had_ handcuffs, too used to that lanyard thing of his, and embarrassing as it is to admit, thinking about that makes him squirm nearly as much as thinking about how much trouble he's in. About what he might've done. Half an hour after that he's nearly convinced that he definitely didn't do anything wrong but it's sorta hard to concentrate on that (and that's so wrong, so so wrong, and it's his duty-- but, it's not, not then, there's nothing else either of them can do right now and he accepts that) and Fraser _handcuffed him_ and, okay, let him out again pretty much fifteen minutes later (turns out Canadians have weird rules about being able to drink your tea unhindered, who knew, and he'll keep that in mind if he's ever actually being held against his actual will somewhere in the Frozen North) but he can't stop thinking about it, about how it looked, about the cool metal warming to his skin and then it's night and Fraser is just _looking_ at him and Ray is suddenly, deeply, funny-feeling-in-the-gut aware that _Fraser sleeps there_ and that must've been all over his face (some undercover guy you are, Kowalski, the bits of his brain not busy going "wahoo!" like they've got a free day pass to Cedar Point are saying) because Fraser's looking pink, and then he's looking red, all over and not just the uniform, and then Ray's swallowing hard and so is Fraser and then Fraser is _right there_ and so are the handcuffs and, well, hell, it's just _good_.

The shitty mattress Fraser sleeps on is, in contrast, not good, but Ray is figuring as soon as they can get this whole murder rap deal cleared up he has a perfectly good bed and a perfectly good headboard and a perfectly good spare set of cuffs - for which he has  _not_ temporarily lost the key, thank you kindly, well, not unless Fraser gets _really irritating_ that is - and since he apparently now also has a perfectly willing Mountie (a perfectly willing Mountie who's leaving hickies on Ray's neck and inner wrists, who's finally taken off the cuffs - again - only to scrape what passes for his five-o'clock shadow over the vein going to Ray's hand before managing to catch Ray's bracelet on his teeth and break the damn thing), Cops and Robbers might just have got a lot more fun again.

Though, as Fraser reminds him (in between practically laminating him to the crappy mattress, his hair mussed, various delicate bits of Ray's anatomy in his _mouth,_ which is just- insanely good on a level that Ray doesn't even have words for, and especially not now, and especially not when he's trying desperately to remember just exactly where Turnbull sleeps because there is no way he wants to get interrupted (or, okay, overheard) right now) he's not exactly the _cop_ this time.  And arching and moaning and his hands adding their own contribution to events, Ray can only pant and agree (while doing things with Fraser which, if not illegal in the US or Canada (and okay, if Fraser's doing them they probably can't be, but _still_ ) that sometimes?

Crime pays.  



End file.
